


Yin and yang and wuji (the wuji's blonde and her apple pies are the key to world peace.)

by orphan_account



Series: Fullmetal Femslash February 2014 [15]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Bisexuality, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Femslash Challenge 2014, Femslash February, Fluff and Humor, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Canon, philosophical musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 15:03:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1189581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which, two and a half years after the Promised Day, Paninya LeCoulte and Winry Rockbell are opening Rockbell Replacements & Repairs; Edward Elric is brooding halfway across the world; and the Emperor of Xing has decided to intervene on behalf of his pansexual polyamorous crazy gearhead friend.</p><p>(And also to snag some of her <em>choice</em> apple pie.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yin and yang and wuji (the wuji's blonde and her apple pies are the key to world peace.)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Femslash February. Prompt I1 on my bingo card, "Matchmaker".
> 
> The Ling Yao & Winry Rockbell dynamic is so under-appreciated. Also, polyamorous Winry Rockbell. Give me the Winry Rockbell/Paninya and Winry Rockbell/Edward Elric, please.
> 
> Set about two and a half years post-Promised Day.

“If I beg hard enough, _then_ will you bake me an apple pie? Or, what if I do a dance? What if I dance right here on the table, maybe whip my shirt in front of your customers, jiggle my stomach a little, pretend that you paid me to entertain ‘em, scare ‘em right off? Would’ja bake me an apple pie _then_?”

Winry sighs. Cradling the phone between her ear and her shoulder, she covers the mouthpiece with a hand and raises an eyebrow at the Emperor of Xing. “Lemme guess. If I bake you an apple pie, then you _won’t_ do whatever garbage you just mentioned.”

He winks. Props his elbows up on the counter. Leans forward until their noses touch. She wrinkles hers; his grin widens. “ _Pleeeeeease_?”

“Okay, okay, sheesh, for an Emperor you’re pretty easy to please. Let me finish this order’n I’ll start one, okay? Now calm your chest and shut up.” With a twirl of the pen she segues into her professionally cheerful tone. “Sorry about that, Ms Leonhardt, just had a customer come in. What were you saying? Mmhm, appointment at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Sounds perfect. Make sure to bring over all of the loose screws, if any’ve fallen out.” She taps the pen against his chin. Ling snatches it from her grip and starts doodling on her arm. Half of her attention on his drawings to ensure she doesn’t end up with genitals scrawled over her arm, Winry continues:”It shouldn’t take more than an hour or so. Are you sure? I could do it tonight.” Ling shakes his head. “In fact, I’d _rather_ tonight. No? Eight o’clock it is, then. Thank you. Mmhm! Have a nice day, Ms Leonhardt. Yeah! You too.” She nestled the phone back into the cradle. “So, Emperor Yao, what exactly have you tattooed on my arm?”

“Birds. I think.” He licks the nub of the pen and examines the vague _W_ shapes floating at her wrist.

Winry tilts her head. “They kind of look like butts.”

“Maybe I should change the sigil of the Yao Clan! Phoenixes are last dynasty. Round butts are in.” She giggles. “And now that I’ve made you laugh, could’ja do the same? Maybe with an, hmm, _apple piiiie_?” She elbows him in the ribs and he topples over, the stool collapsing beneath him. As he scrambles to his feet she waves him over to the makeshift kitchen-slash-dining room. “Hey, harassment of an Emperor’s an offence punishable by execution!”

“Right, because this is Xing and not Amestris where your lazy butt has run off to for a vacation while Ed’s on the other side of the world, huh?” From the cupboards and icebox she pulls butter, flour, sugar, the crust she made last night just for such an occasion. Eight apples, from the basket on the island.

Leaping upwards onto said island, Ling lands in a crouched position as though about to spring into action. Winry rolls her eyes. Show off.“To be fair I _was_ coming to visit _you_ specifically. Plus Lan Fan’s been getting antsy about all the assassination attempts. That sort of thing.”

“Mmhm.” The oven thrums with the sound of preheating. She starts to melt the butter in a saucepan. Then her head snaps up. “Wait, assassination attempts? Are you okay?”

He wiggles a hand noncommittally. “A couple assassins, poisoned food, stuff like that.” Winry stares at him. “Lan Fan’s been on top of things, y’know. That _chi_ sense of hers is incredible. Anyway, now that I’ve gotten some of the main reforms squared away I needed a break.” He smiles wryly. “We both did. Hearing nobles scream like little spoiled babies all day makes for one big headache after another. Plus, May wanted the reins of Xing for a couple of weeks, so I figured, why not?”

“You’d just hand over your throne like that?” She studies him, for some gesture of disrespect towards his sister-in-law, but Ling merely clicks his tongue.

“I trust ‘er. Wouldn’t’ve made her heir if I didn’t. I’ve let her do whatever she wants anyhow; she deserves the throne as much as I do, ‘cept that I had my retainers by my side.” Beat. “But _mooore_ importantly I wanted to check up on ya. How’ve you been? How’s Ed? How’s Paninya? You two started sleeping together yet or what?”

Winry scoops enough flour to thicken the molten white to a gluish paste, then dashes in water, brown sugar, a hint of cinnamon. “Ed’s on this trip around the world. Pa _nin_ ya and I’ve been cracking down on Rush Valley. Rockbell Replacements & Repairs up and running, ready for business!”

“I saw the storefront.” He sniggers.

“Paninya made that.” Winry blows a strand of hair from the front of her face. It flails and settles back down directly over her eyes. “Turns out she has even worse taste than Ed. Where’d she and Lan Fan run off to anyway?”

Ling coughs. “Somewhere, I’d imagine. Presumably somewhere on Earth. Maybe even in Amestris, if we’re lucky!” She throws the flour scoop at him. He dodges; the scoop crashes into the countertop and spills white into his phoenix tail, now reaching to his waist after two years of growing it out. “Hey!”

“Ed’s fine. He sends me letters, that sort of thing. Less frequent, not because he’s _writing_ less, but because the distance’s embiggening.” Ling laughs. Smirking, Winry waits for the filling to boil. “On the bright side, pretty soon we’ll reach the halfway mark and his letters’ll come more quickly, right? Mind peeling and slicing those apples for me?” Sliding off of the countertop, he collects the apple in a gerryrigged pouch made from the loose left side of his yellow tunic. Hastily she adds: “With a _knife_. I don’t care if you ruin your sword, but I don’t know where that thing’s been. For all I know you and Lan Fan’ve been using it in bed.”

He regards the sword he’s already drawn. “You’d need a lot of lube for that,” he notes darkly.

“Ed’s taken the revelation okayish.” She toys with the handle of the saucepan as the filling boils; she cools it. Leaves it simmer. Simmer. She supposes the word to best describe Ed’s reaction would be _fester_. When she speaks again she hears the faint cracks spiderwebbing her timbre. Revealing the seamlines of ters she refuses to shed. “Neither of us really expected it, you know? But I’ve known Paninya for so long. And Ed, of course. I need both of them.” Her eyes narrow; her voice returns to its usual even level. “Make sure you core the apples too.”

“Mmhm.”

“So _that’s_ why you’re here. Paninya sent you a letter, didn’t she? Or Ed told Al told May told Lan Fan told you. Can’t keep a secret in this kinna interconnected trash heap.” Winry stirs the filling with more force than necessary. A droplet splashes onto the counter. Sizzles. “I’m fine, Ling. I don’t need any kind of intervention.”

Ling folds his arms across his chest, winces as the knife audibly rips through the fabric of his tunic, and discreetly places the blade on the cuttingboard. “Never said you did! ‘Fact, I didn’t know about it ‘til I showed up and Paninya asked me if I’d gotten her letters.” He cocks his head to one side. “I really did just want some down-time with you and Lan Fan and Paninya. And even seeing your old mentor again’d be nice.” He affects a wistful, dreamy tone. “I remember when he used to give me free meals . . . ah, those were the days. Anyway if Ed’s being dumb about it let me know and I’ll kick his skinny ass over the desert.”

“First of all he won’t be _dumb_. I know him better than that. Second of all, I can fight my own battles.” She indicates the bottom crust. Ling sweeps the apples inside, arranging them in the crisscross she’s taught him and smoothing the top of the crust over the slices, crimping the edges. She pours the filling over the crust, gently, carefully, watching the thick liquid bloom over the pale surface. Spreading. In her steady grasp she spills not a single drop. Just as she would spill not a single drop of her love. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Uh-huh. I betcha do. It’s always nice to have someone looking out for you, huh? Gets you kinna a warm, fuzzy feeling right here?” He presses her palm to her chest, between her collarbone and her breasts. “Like when someone just gave you a hot plate of food and you haven’t dug in yet but you know that you’re about to and it’s gonna be _delicious_? That kind of feeling, right there! All molten inside.” Exhaling contently, he lowers his eyelids. Bows his head towards her. Presses his forehead into her shoulder. For a moment, with the apple pie waiting on the countertop and the oven’s heat radiating against her back,the warm weight of another human being resting so comfortably on her, depending wholly on her not to fall, comforts her in a way she cannot explain. Of all of the hundreds of thousands of words of the Amestrisian language, she could never string together those to thank him.

The oven timer chirps. The spell breaks: Ling swings the handle down. Winry slides the pie inside. “Could you set that for fifteen minutes?” Cranking the timer, he sets it atop the oven and leans against the handle, his hand touching hers. A cozy quiet blossoms between them, the quiet borne of a friendship weathering years of separation without a hint of damage, the quiet of friends more comfortable with one another than with themselves.

At length Ling nudges her, elbow to side. “So, how’s Paninya?”

Winry wonders if it wouldn’t have been easier to bake the pie on her cheeks. “She’s _Paninya_. Blunt and headstrong and loyal and kind and _damn_ clever with the new appointment system and sweet even if she tries not to be.” She can _feel_ her blush warm and redden further as Ling’s smile widens to highlight the laugh lines around his eyes. “She made me a metal flower for Saint Valentine’s Eve—w-wrote me a poem, even. Something like: Magnetite’s black; automail’s grey; you’re all I want for this Valentine’s Day.” He snickers. She brandishes the wrench. “Hey, _she_ tried!”

“I never said it was bad!” Ling flails his arms in self-defence. “I guess she’s a poet and didn’t know it. And _you’re_ so deeply in love I’m surprised you haven’t drowned yet.”

“Dumbass.”

“Crazy gearhead.”

“Glutton.”

His brow furrows. “Does that mean _fat_?”

“It means your stomach’s a bottomless well. You throw food in there and you never hear from it again,” she says ominously. “Not even a _plink_.”

His smirk turns smug, and she knows she’s made a grave error. “Aha! Winry, you should stop with these compliments. One day they’ll go to my head and I’ll actually start to believe you like, like- _like_ me.” Ling drops to a knee. Clasps her left hand between his. “Will you marry me?”

“Just because I’m polyamorous doesn’t mean I’m in love with _everyone_.” She rubs her temples. “That’d be pretty inconvenient.”

“Shame. I did always want an imported wife. I heard they age well, like imported wine!” He manages to hold a straight face for all of five seconds before both of them burst into stomach-clenching rib-aching shoulder-shaking laughter. She slips on an apple slice a certain _someone_ kicked under the oven and splats atop him, smacking the back of his head into the floor and banging their noses painfully together, and somehow their laughter only grows in volume.

“By the way,” Ling wheezes, his arms pressed tight into his abdomen, “we should probably be getting ready.”

Winry wipes sweat-sticky strands of hair from her face as she sits up, cough-laughter still tumbling from her lips. “Ready? For what?”

He winks. Flashes her the brightest, biggest, most _Ling_ -est grin she’s ever seen. “Why.” A chill of terror and excitement courses through her at the mischievous flare in his eyes. “For our double date, of course!”

 

Dinner, at a fancy restaurant with dishes meant for two; Paninya insists that the love mounds are clearly meant to represent _eyes_ rather than whatever gutter-minded thing Winry dares to dream up. Dancing, at a spotlit club bursting with sound pouring from a phonogram curling around the music like a tightly coiled spring waiting to explode. Or maybe that’s just the knot in Winry’s stomach. In a blue slip that pinches under her breasts and heels just low enough to dance in but high enough to intimidate the universe—not that she needs the added centimetres, Lan Fan observes, much to Winry’s satisfaction—she twirls around the dance floor, a visual serenade in motion, a dancing ocean guided solely by the gentle tides of her moon. Paninya, herself in a beautiful azure dress that swished at her ankles and underlined the deeper midnight blue of her eyes, drew Winry against her chest until she could feel Paninya’s heart thrumming in time to hers. One hand in the small of her back, grounding her roots. The other pulling on her fingers, coaxing her wings. Feathering her freedom. Sending her cartwheeling, soaring, _flying_ up and up and up as if the roof could fall away to reveal a sky of diamonds.

Paninya’s smile ties balloons to her shoulders; her laugh, balloons to her wrists; her _I love you_ s, balloons to her hearts. Every second the ground feels farther and farther away. Every second the beaming crescent moon in the sky seems nearer and nearer, as if she could reach out, wrap her fingers on its horns, and climb into a hammock of moonbeams, could spend the night rocking softly in Paninya’s arms, could whisper _I love you_ back over and over again and never look back.

Afterwards Paninya and Winry stow their dresses under the backseats of the choking automobile they barely scraped up the cenz to purchase secondhand. Ling and Lan Fan fold their tuxedos and tuck them into place beside the women’s dresses—by Lan Fan’s measured embrace, Ling floats like a hummingbird above the beckoning flower blossom, the stares of dancers unfamiliar with a woman in a tuxedo leading a man taller in body but not necessarily in spirit—and follow the fleetfooted lovers to the grassy knell. Overhead the gods have overturned their vases of nights’ ink. The pools of darkness shimmer with stars aglow. The galaxies shine spinning petals strewn in the raven hair of a goddess of love or creation or both, because love and creation are one and the same, really. They clutch at each other’s hands like lifelines and crush against each other’s chests like passing through space and time to curl into one another’s forms. The night comes alive in stories, remembrances, whispers: constellations of a childhood spent waiting for shooting stars and phantom parents that never landed and never came home; mythologies of a childhood spent listening to rivers of praise meant for the chosen prince before reality parted the maelstrom; histories of a childhood spent hiding in the shadows and watching grabby hands close around whatever scraps the desert had to offer; traditions of a childhood spent losing the self-identity of a child and gaining that of an extension of another, of a child who would not become a man until long after the first’s childhood had snapped bear-trap shut around a beating heart. Amestris and Xing. The west and the east. Resembool and Rush Valley. The southern mountains and central Xijing. Wealth and poverty. Joy and grief. Birth and death. Life.

In that moment, the four of them swallowed up in the stars, they celebrate life. Existence. When Lan Fan kisses Ling the moon rises; when Winry kisses Paninya the moon sets. Under the silver glow they become deities that wield the power of the universe in their mortal palms. Willingly they cast off their immortality in return for human forms capable of lying in the dewy grass, chests expanding and contracting in sync, breaths short-quick and lengthy-shuddering in turn, mouths and hands and words painting heat and ecstasy and warmth and peace and love across the celestial lights.

 

In a perfect world Winry sleep each night between two warm bodies, to the left her golden boy, golden-haired and golden-eyed and golden-skinned, to her right her midnight girl, midnight-haired and midnight-eyed and midnight-skinned. The sun and moon alike come to rest in her embrace. For what is the day without the night? What is the darkness without the light?

Not the two of them at once. But if she cannot split her heart down the middle, she would give the whole of her love to _both_. Ling has told her of the concept of _yin_ and _yang_. Of two opposites coexisting into a whole. And of _wuji_ , the other, enveloping and supporting both.

“If dead grass is _yin_ and living grass is _yang_ , then the soil, neither alive nor dead, is _wuji_ ,” he explained, tickling her nose with the feathered tip of the calligraphy brush.

She would be their _wuji_. She needs her, and him. Paninya. Edward. No. _Both_.

And so she rolls over beneath the thin sheets. And so she slips a hand under the cotton undershirt clinging to Paninya’s skin from a combination of dew-grass moisture and dance-sweat dampness. Fingers skirting over the hard muscles of Paninya’s abdomen, tracing the softer contours of the valley between her hip and leg. Paninya stirs. Winry watches her lover’s—and what a word, _lover_ , the implication of _love_ in every syllable, every gasped vowel and mouth-rounded consonant—breath rise and fall in her chest, and she thinks it is perhaps tied with the most beautiful painting of life she’s seen in her eighteen years of existence. “Paninya?”

Paninya mumbles something vaguely sounding of _go to sleep_ and _long party_ and a couple of swears muttered under her breath. A breath that Winry catches in her mouth. She presses her lips together, keeping the kiss locked away deep inside her. A lantern for the rainy eye of the summer maelstrom. A flame for the frigid dead of the winter blizzard. Or simply a kiss to hold onto when the rest of the world lapses into confusion and terror and apocalyptic destructions.

Then she forces her jaw to unclench. To release the kiss transformed to courage within her heart. To let her feelings surge forth, first in fits and starts, then in a cascade, the dream crumpling under the sheer weight of her emotions churning and roiling and aligning in ordered chaos with the emotions of the woman silently observing her with a gaze capable of devouring her whole and yet somehow solely engulfing her heart. “I love you.”

Paninya’s eyelids flutter. “Oh.” A pause, of epiphany. Of understanding. Of revelation. “ _Oh_. Oh my god. Winry. Win _mmf_.”

 _Winmmf_ is not what Paninya meant to say. Yet it is what she says. Because everything has already been said. Actions, Winry has learned, speak louder than words. But sometimes you need the words to spark the actions.

 

Dawn breaks over the hill. Ling kisses Lan Fan awake, hugs Winry awake, murmurs for Winry to _something_ Paninya awake and dodges the inevitable wrench when he clarifies his suggestion. The four of them sit cross-legged in their undergarments, smelling of the great outdoors and ridden in bugbites. No one cares. Ling retrieves the apple pie concealed in the trunk. They split the pie into quarters. Apples oozing sugar and cinnamon at the edges. Giggling, Ling feeds Lan Fan speared soft slices dripping juices. For once the retainer breaks out into a smile as she leans forward to accept the offering. Paninya, resting in Winry’s lap, opens her mouth wide for Winry to scoop crumbly bites onto her tongue between awkward upside-down kisses that leave pie on their chins and laughter on their lips. “It’s almost eight,” says Ling in the midst of the pie-fest. Lan Fan clicks her teeth together. Groaning either internally or audibly the four pack up the pic-a-nic. Dig usable articles of clothing from the backseats and wriggle them on with promises to bathe as soon as they make it home.

Winry backs into cul-de-sac. Offering to take care of Ms Leonhardt, since she took the original order of automail craft prior to the repair, Paninya bolts from the passenger’s door. Lan Fan starts to help out with putting away and cleaning the tuxedos and dresses. “You two fight over the first shower,” she calls over her shoulder. Ling and Winry, alone in the running car.

Unclipping his seatbelt with a _sszz_ , Ling stretches himself out luxuriously from the backseat to the front, his chin on the stickshift, his fingers splayed over the edges of the driver’s and passenger’s seats. “Sooo. How’d it go, big girl?”

Winry kills the car. “Shut up.” But there’s not a trace of malice in her tone. Mirth. Amusement. Gratitude, maybe, if he unwraps enough layers of grime from the diamond of Winry Rockbell. Carbon, the same as any human, but transformed by heat and pressure and time into something he can never hope to understand but indirectly.And they say the Emperor’s the Son of Heaven.

“Sooo _oooo_ , did’ja manage to spill the beans? Let the kitty-cat out of the bag? Dump the luggage?”

“I’m pretty sure that it’s dump the _baggage_ , and I don’t actually think that ‘dump the baggage’ exists.” Winry opens the car door. A wave of heat rolls in from the Rush Valley sun. “But yeah. Okay, that was good. That was—maybe even a little bit more than _good_. Ling, you fucking piece of shit, you fucking _genius_.”

Ling grins. Lifting his chin slightly, he bumps his head against her palm. She starts to scratch his head; as they’ve discovered, he _loves_ getting them, and she _loves_ giving them. “I knew it. So, your heart still hurting?”

Winry shrugs. Although he can’t see her expression from his current position, he can _feel_ her smile in the manner in which he can feel Lan Fan’s. Not quite in her _chi_ but close enough. “Nah,” she answers, and the faint laughter in her voice embiggens his grin, as she would say, “I don’t think my heart’s still hurting at all. The opposite, even. I think . . .” He could sense her weighing the words on her tongue, and he nudged her palm again. Her fingers gripped his hair as if searching for a shore to cast off her anchor of burden. As if she's found one. "I think, maybe, that my heart's even feeling free."


End file.
